


sorry to interrupt your spiralling, but i brought apple slices

by perniciousOverkill



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Caretaking, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Niche ship, it's really soft..., jared hopworth also has rejection sensitive dysphoria because i said so, jared hopworth has anxiety, maxwell rayner is a mean dude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26231776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perniciousOverkill/pseuds/perniciousOverkill
Summary: manuela dominguez has been working for three days, and jared hopworth is starting to get worried about her.(jared hopworth is in love with his epic gamer girlfriend manuela but also has an anxiety disorder)
Relationships: Jared Hopworth/Manuela Dominguez
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	sorry to interrupt your spiralling, but i brought apple slices

**Author's Note:**

> don't mind me, this is literally the most niche ship and i only realized the timeline doesn't work after i attached myself to it :// but i do love jared/manuela more than i care about most things... also this made me so soft *crying emoji*
> 
> i'm a simple lesbian, i see domestic intimacy and i eat my fist

When Manuela stumbles onto something, the solution to the little thing that’s been stumping her for weeks, she starts etching circles into her desk with the closest, sharpest object. There are little rings in the dark wood that stand as a testament to this, and also how often she zones in on one little detail hard enough to miss a solution that’s right in front of her eyes. This is a night like this.

She’s leaning back in her chair, fixated on the whiteboard that’s chockfull of useless symbols and numbers. In front of her, pages and pages of attempts that have been angrily scribbled out in black BIC pen. The only sound is the soft scraping of her nails against dead cuticles. The problem she’s working on has been ruminating in her head for weeks with no result. She’s at the exact same place she was before. 

Sometimes it feels as though she catches something; simply the frayed edges of the right idea. She holds onto it, and like a sweater unravelling, pages and pages of formulaic work come spilling out into her world, and for a moment, they are nice to look at. But then she misses the spiral on the integral, and her flow is interrupted, and she realizes that she her math is equivalent only to a madman’s ramble.

And she has been in her office for three days now, with only a few winks of sleep now and then. And the gentle giant in the other room is starting to get worried for her.

He knows better than to interrupt her; her process is fragile, and he feels large and oafish and antithetical to all that is fragile. He envisions himself, trying to gently knock on her door to check in on how she’s doing and if she needs something, and the entire door tearing from its frame and landing on the floor with a gruesome thud. And she would pretend not to be angry, but she is a woman of rage, and he sees it in her eyes and the way she would sleep on the couch, so she doesn’t scream at him.

So normally, he lets her spiral for a bit, and she emerges the next day either defeated or triumphant. But she has been in her office for three days now, with only a few winks of sleep now and then. And the gentle giant in the other room is starting to get worried for her.

He has to pace around the room to build himself up to the terror of confronting her, even if it is something he is doing out of care. Jared Hopworth has seen every person he loves leave, and it is vivid in his mind’s eye when he imagines himself taking something one step too far again and Manuela storming out, never to be seen again. But he has to do something; it has been three days. She has not come out for water, and his limited knowledge still tells him that soon she will be too weak and dehydrated to even continue her spiral. 

He practices in the mirror for a bit;

“Hey… you’ve been in there a while, can I come in?” 

His voice is shaky though, and that is not the only thing that is shaking.

As he prepares a small platter of food and drink, he notices the silverware clatter as his hands wobble; large and oafish. He doesn’t know how to cook, but he tries his best to make something appetizing. He carefully lays out apple slices, crackers, cheese, and a few pieces of chocolate, and then even more cautiously pours a cup of her favourite decaffeinated green tea. It does not look pretty, like how he imagined it, but he knows it is the best that he can do. So, he takes it, the fork on the metal tray rattling as he moves, and approaches her small office, heart skipping beats randomly as he does so. 

The door is shut and has been for three days. There is no noise coming from inside the room, but there hasn’t been for quite some time. He knocks with his foot, softly tapping the bottom of the door as his hands are full. 

“Ella? Are you awake?”

At first, there is continued silence, and then a soft and hearse voice comes, albeit muffled by the door. “Yes.”

“Can I come in?”

“… yes.”

He uses his elbow to open the door and enter, watching as Manuela turns around in her chair; her eyeliner has been smeared into two distinct rings around her eyes, and her lipstick has received a similar treatment, blurring the actual edges of where her lips end. Her skin now carries a soft purple tint underneath; dehydration, although Jared is not nearly astute enough to know this. She looks at the platter, and her stomach groans. 

“Is that for me?” 

He nods, and allows himself in, placing the platter down onto her desk. He stands uncomfortably after, trying to guide her through the board. “There’s some fruits… I brought cheese and crackers too, I thought that would be good… the slices are kind of thick, I hope that’s okay. I can fix it if it’s not. And there’s the… the tea.”

She stares, and from his towering angle, he cannot see her facial expression, only the top of her head as she does not move. His stomach lurches as his brain begins to set off alarms; she does not like it. He has done it, and he has gone too far, and now she would like to leave. He is dumb and he is big, and she is smart and small, and now he is impeding on her and her smartness and her smallness. Oh god, how does he even leave this room after all that he is done? Perhaps he will tear a hole through the floorboards or knock over a bookshelf of her precious collections?

His thoughts are interrupted by a soft sniffle. Manuela looks up at him, and her eyes are watering, her face pulled into a tough scowl, the same one she makes when she’s pretending that a movie isn’t making her sad.

Now he is panicking again, lowering himself to her height as she fights back the oncoming wave of tears. “No, no, no- why are you crying? What- whatever it is, I’ll fix it, I promise, I’m so sorry I just thought you might-”

She shakes her head and wipes away the tears that have now spilled onto her tired and sad cheeks. “No, I’m happy, please…”

And when she says this, he is soaring.

“Nobody’s ever done something like this before for me.” She smiles at him, laughing. “Nobody’s ever cared enough to check.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know- it’s always been my job to just work, work, work, without stopping. So, nobody ever came to check on me. Nobody ever did this for me.” She gestures to the platter. “I really appreciate it. It’s really nice of you, Jay… how long have I even been doing this, anyway?”

“Three days.” She looks at him, shocked, and he averts his eyes; he hates telling her things that she might not want to hear.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I completely lost track of the time. I was working on this thing, and I kept thinking I was so close to it and then I’d lose it again, and it’s just so frustrating… ugh. I’m sorry.”

“No don’t be sorry, I get it…” He reconsiders. “Well, I don’t get it. But I… you know what I mean. Just- please eat something.”

She nods and pops an apple slice into her mouth, sighing happily when the flavour suddenly brings to light just how very hungry, she was. It’s not long before the entire platter has been devoured, and she looks at him, content. “Thank you…”

He nods, softly. “What were you working on, anyways?”

She looks back to the papers, and the whiteboard.

[When the small droplet of her tears drips onto the page, it is stained black with her makeup. Rayner’s shadow casts itself over the room, the light fizzling out in his presence. 

“You’re not any closer, are you?”

She grits her teeth, and it’s everything in her power not the grab the papers before her and tear them to shreds. 

“This is the only thing you’re good for, Ms. Dominguez, and you can’t even manage to live up to it. Need I remind you that this is the standard you made for yourself.”

She cries silently and is left alone in darkness when he leaves.]

“Nothing… this is… not important.”

Jared is confused but allows her to have her moment of self-realization. He enjoys watching her as she thinks through things in real time; he can watch the gears turn in her head in a way he could never dream of achieving.  
If she feels his eyes on her, she gives no sign of it. 

Suddenly, she stands up, grabbing the work in front of her and crushing it into one paper ball. She hands it to Jared; “would you mind throwing this out for me?”. 

As he tosses it into the paper waste, he watches her walk up to the whiteboard, staring it down like an old enemy. When she erases it out, it is full of purpose. He knows there is something she is not telling him, but he lets her be.

She turns to him, and her face is full of light and life again.

“Why don’t we go to bed?” She nods, and he follows her out of the room, turning off the light behind them. 

He has to lean down a bit in the bathroom to stop his head from hitting the ceiling; she sits on the edge of tub, meeting his eyes in the mirror. 

The bed they sleep on is… big, to say the least, and has been reinforced to stop the slats from caving in under his weight. Manuela is easy to lose in a bed of this size, so when they climb in, he holds her close. 

In the beginning, he never touched her, never held her for fear of breaking something, but Manuela was the only person who didn’t see him as somebody that breaks things, and surely did not view herself as a thing that breaks. Jared never knew how good it was to hold somebody, and to be held in return. He lays one arm over her waist, and she cradles his face in her hands. 

It does not quite make him feel small, but it makes him feel like he doesn’t need to be small.

“I love you, Jay…”

“I love you too, Ella…” 

She brings her lips to his forehead, and soon the exhaustion takes over, and they are both asleep.


End file.
